Mahadeo A. Sukhai

Yichun Zhao, Miguel A. Nacenta, Mahadeo A. Sukhai et al.

Despite recognition of the value of diversity, the way work takes place can fail to support blind or low-vision employees, especially in collaborative work settings. This paper examines how professional teams with diverse visual abilities use information representations (e.g., PDF documents, spreadsheets and charts). A diary study with follow-up individual interviews (23 participants with mixed abilities from 5 teams) and 2 separate focus groups (7 participants from 2 other teams) allowed us to characterize key dimensions of the role of representations in the workplace into four types of interrelated failures and workarounds, influenced by workplace stigmas and shaped by evolving social dynamics towards interdependent information work. We contribute this new empirically supported conceptual understanding of representation use in workplaces that can help design and improve the experiences of mixed-ability teams doing knowledge work in the current technological landscape.

Zahra Ahmadi, Peter R. Lewis, Mahadeo A. Sukhai

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly employed to enhance assistive technologies, yet it can fail in various ways. We conducted a systematic literature review of research into AI-based assistive technology for persons with visual impairments. Our study shows that most proposed technologies with a testable prototype have not been evaluated in a human study with members of the sight-loss community. Furthermore, many studies did not consider or report failure cases or possible risks. These findings highlight the importance of inclusive system evaluations and the necessity of standardizing methods for presenting and analyzing failure cases and threats when developing AI-based assistive technologies.